Produced by One View Commercial
Author/Li Yan
Edit/Wooden Fish
The number of new tea drinks opened has picked up.
In April, the number of new stores opened by 26 new tea beverage chain brands tracked by Yilan Commercial increased by 638 compared with the previous month, and the number of new stores opened in the industry increased month-on-month for the first time this year.
In terms of the overall number of stores, 26 domestic chain tea brands have opened a total of 2,280 new stores, and there are 110814 existing stores.
From the perspective of brands: among the 26 brands, 14 brands opened stores in April compared with March. Among them, Mixue Bingcheng opened 326 stores in March and 787 stores in April, an increase of more than two times compared with the number of newly opened stores. The second place is Gu Ming, with 244 new stores opened in April.
It is worth noting that although the number of stores opened by many brands increased compared to March. However, the number of existing stores in the industry decreased month-on-month. According to the statistics of Yilan Commerce, there were 114906 existing stores of the 26 new tea beverage brands in March, but only 110814 at the end of April. The number of stores decreased by 4000+. In other words, a large number of new tea brands cannot open stores as fast as they close stores.
In terms of the urban coverage of new tea brands, Naixue's tea opened its first store in 8 cities in April after slowing down the pace of urban coverage in March, ranking first in the industry in terms of the number of new stores landing in cities.
From the perspective of the brand's existing stores, the new tea beverage brand has begun to show a polarization trend, and the first existing store is Mixue Bingcheng, with 31,763 domestic stores and more than 36,000 global stores. The second place is Gu Ming, with 9,316 stores in China. The number of new stores opened in April was also ranked first and second.
At the same time, a number of brands, including 7 Fen Sweet and Kurotaki Tang, have continued to reduce the number of stores covering cities this year. 7 Fen Tian decreased from 160 cities in January to 151 cities in April, and Kurotakido decreased from 125 cities in January to 119 cities in April.
It is worth noting that a number of new tea brands such as Jasmine Milk White, Ma Wuwang Beverage Factory, and Ningji Hand-made Lemon Tea also opened their first stores in many cities in April. Among them, Jasmine Milk White entered 12 new cities in April, and the number of new stores opened in the city ranked first among the 26 new tea brands tracked by Yilan Commerce for a long time.
Tea Baidao broke on the first day of listing
On April 23, Tea Baidao officially broke out of the IPO encirclement, following Nai Xue's tea, won the crown of "New Tea Drink Second Share", and sounded the gong of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange before Mixue Bingcheng, Gu Ming, and Shanghai Auntie.
On the first day of listing, the performance of the capital market was not satisfactory. At the opening of the Hong Kong stock market, Chabaidao fell below the issue price of HK$17.5, and as of the close, the stock price had fallen by more than 26% to HK$12.8, with a market value of only HK$18.91 billion.
According to Frost & Sullivan's report, in terms of retail sales in 2023, Chabaidao ranks third in China's freshly made tea shop market, with a market share of 6.8%.
As the largest IPO in Hong Kong stocks this year, Chabaidao has not aroused the enthusiasm of retail investors. According to the disclosure of Chabaidao, the winning rate of the stock issuance is 100%. According to the Securities Times, when the new shares of Chabaidao were subscribed, there was a situation where they were not fully subscribed.
Zhan Junhao, founder of Fujian Great Aim Brand Positioning Consulting, believes that the first day of issuance is a common phenomenon in the capital market, and it may be affected by a variety of factors, including market environment, investor sentiment, company fundamentals and IPO pricing strategy. For Chabaidao, the breakout on the first day of listing may reflect investors' uncertainty about the company's future development, or the market's doubts about its valuation. However, this may also be a short-term correction in the market, rather than a negation of the company's long-term value. Therefore, it is necessary to take a sober look at this phenomenon and pay attention to the company's future operating performance and market reaction.
In the view of Yilan Business, the breakage of tea Baidao is inseparable from the reasons of the industry and the enterprise itself.
From the perspective of enterprises, on the one hand, tea Baidao has a common problem in the new tea beverage industry: high food safety risks and product homogeneity, and lack of characteristic explosive products; On the other hand, the profits of the franchisees of Tea Baidao are lower than those of their peers, and the supply chain is not as mature as that of Mixue Bingcheng and Gu Ming.
From the perspective of the industry, after the high growth of the new tea beverage industry has slowed down for several years, the industry has fallen into homogeneous competition, and the capital market still has doubts about its future imagination. It is unavoidable that the new tea stores in the current first- and second-tier markets are relatively saturated, and any central street and other densely populated places are a three-step tea shop.
The four major new tea brands have closed stores in many cities
In April, under the background of the overall recovery of the industry and the acceleration of expansion, four new tea brands closed stores in many cities.
According to the data of Narrow Door Restaurant, 7 Fen Tian and Kurotaki Hall have continued to withdraw from many cities this year.
The number of stores covered from January to April was 160,158,153,151, and the number of stores covered by Kurotakido from January to April was 125,121,120,119.
A yogurt cow and sweet lala closed stores and withdrew from the city around February, and then retraced the number of stores in individual cities in March and April, and the number of newly opened cities has not caught up with the number of closed cities.
A yogurt cow covers 176 cities in January, 163 cities in February, 164 cities in March, and 165 cities in April. Sweet Lala, covering 306 cities in February, 293 cities in March, and 300 cities in April.
One view business found that these brands have similar rules: there have been phenomenal big explosive products in the industry, and they have expanded all the way with the blessing of explosive products.
For example, a yogurt cow is a representative of freshly made yogurt, and once became popular on the Internet with a cup of yogurt purple rice dew and became the Chongqing version of "Tea and Beauty". According to media reports, in 2016, a yogurt cow sold more than 3,000 cups a day, or 4 cups per minute. In the past two years, a yogurt cow has gradually moved out of Chongqing, and even opened stores in Australia and the United States.
7 Fen Sweet is the pioneer of cup Yangzhi nectar, as the town store signboard of 7 Fentian, Yangzhi manna has been strongly bound to it as a major brand label; Tianlala has entered the sinking market with explosive products such as Four Seasons Orchard, and will open 2,940 stores in 2023, and the number of newly opened stores will rank among the first echelon in the industry; Kurotaki's Kurotaki Zhen Milk is a group of childhood memories of the post-90s, but the scale of the store has been shrinking in the past two years;
There are explosive products and memory points, why are these new tea brands facing the closure of stores in many cities?
There are several reasons for business speculation:
First of all, the traffic brought by explosive products to enterprises is limited, and if new tea brands want to go far, they must fight both supply chain and marketing. Although the explosive products of the above brands have the attributes of the first in the industry, they also have the problem that the word-of-mouth style is relatively simple and cannot stimulate consumers to buy for a long time.
Second, the enterprises themselves are taking the initiative to close stores with poor efficiency and withdraw from cities with poor market cultivation results. For example, 7 Fentian held a brand upgrade conference this year, proposing to focus on Shanghai and Jiangsu to update the new store image. Tianlala began to speed up the pace of going overseas, and while withdrawing from some cities in China, it opened several stores in the Southeast Asian market.
Finally, the development of new tea beverage brands is closely related to the operational capabilities of enterprises. A yogurt cow is the best example, previously reported by the media, a yogurt cow "product gross profit margin of about 55%-60%, consumer recognition is also very high, but the headquarters of the local franchisee operation support is not very in place, such as site selection, takeaway business negotiation ability and mastery of resources, etc., some hot-selling raw materials are often out of stock, brand promotion and product research and development are less combined with the local characteristics of franchisees. Due to the insufficient number of franchisees and the limited number of goods, this also causes the supply price of yogurt base materials for "a yogurt cow" in some areas to be relatively high, and franchisees need to solve the logistics costs by themselves.
From this point of view, having a popular product is only the first step for a new tea brand to enter the market. In 2023, the expansion of the new tea beverage track is in full swing, and the entire industry is growing rapidly. At the beginning of 2024, many leading companies are vying to be the first to go public, and the bubble in the industry may dissipate, and companies need to be more cautious at every step.